I’m a full-time mother, whose voracious reading habit is being shared with my two children, Dulcie, a little girl who is three and a half, and Himself the Elf who is 12 months old.

It has got me thinking about why I choose certain books to read to them; why Dulcie in particular is drawn to some titles and not others; and why the request “Read it again!” can produce two wildly different reactions from me – delight, or utter, utter despair.

Are some children’s books just ‘better’ than others? And if so, what makes them that way? I’m fascinated that some books appeal because they reflect the lives the three of us (or four in the evenings and at the weekends), yet those that are set somewhere unfamiliar can still appeal to two tiny people whose current sphere is small, domestic and still occasionally baffling to them.